Connection of a different sort.

There is a boy. He is on medication. This boy has no strength to conquer anything, even the father who has conquered him his last 18 years. But this boy likes oranges, (hordes them from what I know) to look at, to hold, but never to eat. He only stares blankly at the dimpled skin. Why?

There is a girl. She is on medication of a different kind. This girls does not fidget with her hair, pens and pencils, or even hair sticks and the like. This girl likes to use her hands with objects such as knives, razor blades, and other sharp instruments. Why?

-Feel the air-electric with potential collision: she whispers to him as she pulls the orange from his grip. Perhaps she explains to him how she likes to peel oranges, the delight under her fingernails (like skin), how she savors the tender meat. Above all, how she takes pleasure in squeezing the dimpled skin, feeling the sweet juice running over her hands and down into her hungry mouth.

His eyes fall to his feet, which shuffle nervously, forever in the day trying to shuffle away the abandonment, the isolation, the medication. She smiles at him, although he doesn’t see her.
There is gentle conversation between them; hers filled with delectable words, his with silent wishes and head nods. There are internal technicalities at work here that can’t answer why, so I will not ask.

-Become involved: smell the fruit as she peels the skin, releasing sweetness, slowly like her encouraging words to him. Listen as each peel falls to his once nervous feet, you will hear the slight and essential sigh of one who has been released from fruitless isolation. Watch as she divides the produce, handing him the fullness of self in a half –with affective words, with compassionate action, with such simple tender involvement in another human. He smiles.